Music and Museums in Germany, Austria, Switzerland

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13 July 2012





All the walking and photo taking can wear one out. When last we spoke, dear reader, I was promising more stories and some pictures. Well as this piece unfolds I am hopeful that you will not be disappointed.



Thursday morning started off slow and easy. The breakfast at the Luitpold is very good, too good in fact since you want to try everything. It is not what most Americans expect for breakfast, but then this not a hotel that caters to Americans. It comprises a great selection of rolls, several different types of cheese and cheese spreads, 4 or 5 different types of cold cuts, hard boiled eggs, yoghurt, cereal, coffee, tea, and two different types of juice. Once sated it was off to visit a friend of Glenn’s and to get a jin shin jyutsu treatment. It will be easier for you to look it up gentle reader than for me to take the time to explain it to you.



After the treatment we went over to the Carl Orff center for Glenn to say hello to the director of the center, Dr. Thomas Rösch. Glenn was a friend of Orff’s and used to visit he and his wife every summer when he was in Germany. It turns out that Dr. Rösch is rushing to a meeting relating to the 75^th Anniversary of the Carmena Burana and wants to meet with us when we return to Munich in two weeks.



Our next stop was a short walk to the Bavarian State Library (Bayerische Staatsbibliotek) where there is an exhibit of Orff and the Carmena Burana composition. The library is along Ludwigstrasse, named for Ludwig I of Bavaria and was envisioned as a Grand Avenue with buildings fit for a king. It marked the beginning of Munich’s move from medieval town to growing 19^th Century city.



Most of the buildings on the avenue were severely damaged during WWII. The library lost 400,000 books in the bombings which was one-third of their holdings. The new building was not completed until 1957. It is currently undergoing a renovation to restore it to some of it’s original interior glory.



On the way to the library we stopped at St. Leopold Church. It is one of the very few churches to come through WWII virtually unscathed. It is not the most beautiful of churches in Munich and it is also in the middle of a second major restoration project so some of the walls were covered with scaffolding. I took pictures of what was exposed and some of the decorations are still quite interesting. One of the uploaded images is of the interior.



We took the U-bahn back to the Hauptbahn which is the main train station in Munich and the transit hub for many of the tram lines and U-bahn and S-bahn subway lines. Once at the hotel it was a time to rest before leaving for the Bayerische Staatoper (Bavarian State Opera) which is housed in the German National Theatre. An interesting thing is the existence of numerous national theatre buildings throughout Germany. Each has a slightly different usage of the word national so as not to confuse people but also to make a claim of importance. In Munich most people refer to the building as the Bavarian State Opera.



The opera we saw was Rossini’s Cenerentola (Cinderella) which is a typical Rossini mechanistically conceived piece. The modern theatrical description as “formulaic” conveys the true structure of this as well as other Rossini operas. This production was staged as it was 30 years ago and over dinner Glenn realized that an old friend of his was the designer and director of the production. Although the singing was very good, the staging was still very mechanistic. It takes some daring on the part of a director to breath life into the production and give the audience a reason to stay awake. Even though this was not a production I particularly liked the audience seemed to enjoy it with much foot stomping to show their very strong approval of the performances. After the opera Glenn and I had dinner at Zum Franziskaner a good Bavarian style restaurant.



And so ended another day in Munich.

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